Quentin Troy
|name=Quentin Darcy Troy |sex=Male |species= , |dob=01st |mob=11 |yob=1432 |age=Ageless |facs=None |birthplace=Italy |height=6' |build=Athletic |hair=Brown |eyes=Green |skin=Fair |actor=Jon Fleming |music="Safe In My Garden" - The Mamas and the Papas }}Overview= Quentin is a hereditary Witch who has been around for quite some time. He is the "nephew" of Nessa Du Valle. Personality Quentin has a very charming personality, and even when he's not at his best, his natural charisma still shows. He can be in turns cheerful, bitter, and resigned, all in a short time, and his emotions assert themselves strongly for the moment and faded soon after. It's difficult for him to maintain passion without hope, so at times he can seem like a plastic toy: colorful, appealing, even fascinating, but ultimately hollow. He isn't empty inside all the time, though, and when inspiration is stoked inside him to do and to feel things, he can be a source of inspiration in turn for others. There's a vibrance in him not often seen, although much of this is due to his understanding that it is a temporary thing that he must appreciate while he has it and never take it for granted. Quentin is easy to trust and easy to consider as a friend, whether or not he has someone's benefit in mind. It's simple for him to mingle and win admiration, though it's not always satisfying for him. Because of that, he can undervalue genuine interest in him or miss it, thinking it's just part of the crowd enchanted with the idea of him. He does not trust others easily, however, and he is slow to confide his secrets in most anyone, especially after the last decades with the witch-hunters. He is difficult to really know, although he does, deep down, want to trust others and have more friends than he does. He may maintain defenses for his own protection, but there will always be the strong desire to connect with others, even if other aspects of his personality tell him to avoid it for simplicity's sake. |-| Sheet= SIGNATURE ABILITY Instant Army Normally, Quentin's ability to transform things is applied to things specifically created for that purpose. In a situation of greatest need, however, he can make a fighting force out of anything: furniture, plants, cars. Essentially any object that is capable of it can be made an ambulatory warrior against the opposing force. Whatever he empowers in this way will only be as tough as it would normally be, and none will have sentience or independent thought; he will still have to unite them with a focused target. He must remain conscious to direct them and to keep them animated, but he doesn't have to constantly impress his will upon them. They will all be able to attack the target or targets, once they are established. This instant army lasts perhaps an hour at absolute maximum. The energy expenditure will catch up to Quentin once the items become no longer animated, requiring him to rest for a time proportional to how long he animated his forces. An extended period of time may even render him unconscious until he can recover some energy. SKILLS CASTING POWERS ADVANTAGES WEAKNESSES |-| Background= During the heady years of the Renaissance, in Italy, a noble family welcomed a new addition: Quentin was born and became one of only two children in that family. His sister Helena, older by two years, never took to Quentin and, once they entered their teenage years, began to conspire to get him completely out of the way, resentful of the attention he received and the ease with which he affected those around him; she possessed far less of the charisma and charm that he commanded effortlessly, and no amount of study or diligence could catch her up. Quentin had, it turned out, been the result of an impulsive affair with a decidedly non-noble father of one of the many nomadic peoples. It was hardly a significant matter and had been completely hushed and hidden from the very beginning of the pregnancy. However, Helena's prodding brought her closer to the truth, and it fueled her resentment even more. She could not tolerate a "Gypsy boy" daring to have the lion's share of what she felt only she deserved. Their parents pleaded with Helena to leave it, but she was even more motivated than ever by her latest discovery. She began to arrange stunts in an attempt to shame Quentin and ruin his friendships and bonds. Since Quentin often patronized the arts and had even taken to art himself, she soured a relationship between a promising mentor and the boy, then ruined a number of Quentin's sketches and paintings. Quentin had a suspicion of what was going on, but he could never prove anything. Tensions ran high, and their parents considered sending Helena away to Silesia, as they had a small house and some land there, as well as cousins of lesser nobility that could be trusted. Tragically, however, when one of Helena's stunts went awry, it ended her life before they could act. Though Quentin was not implicated -- if anything, the occurrence made it clear that the previous stunts had been arranged to make him look bad -- his parents nonetheless decided that they should send Quentin to Silesia, to at least get him away from the tragedy that had befallen the house. Quentin did not care much for Silesia, though he continued his arts. In time, it became clear that there was something nagging at him. He noticed things others did not, though he also quickly learned to keep these things to himself. Eventually, on one of her occasional visits, Quentin met Nessa, whom he discovered was a close relation: his aunt. She taught him about his gifts, some of which had already begun to manifest, and urged him in the right direction for further study. Quentin, having discovered this new interest, threw himself wholeheartedly into his studies, although the limitations of his time and place constantly frustrated him. Over the years and Nessa's visits, he learned more and developed in sorcery and occultism, but it never wholly satisfied him. Instead, it was like bread crumbs in a wasteland. He had tasted the potential for more, in beauty and glory and all those splendid things, yet he spent his days around pale imitations. His natural curiosity and eagerness to learn brought misfortune upon him again when Nessa, in her extremely powerful but risky mirror magic, unintentionally left open a way he spotted and innocently wandered through, trapping him in a mirror realm for quite some time due to the differing quality of time within it and outside. During this time, however, he honed his abilities to an exceptional level, taking advantage of the reflective nature of the mirror world. By the time he was finally freed, so much had happened that the standard of equivalent exchange meant that the mirror entity that kept him sealed away had to essentially give its entire being. However, it ended up being essentially absorbed by Quentin's stronger nature, in a not entirely expected but certainly welcome turn of events. It altered him fundamentally, as did his experience in the mirror world, and enhanced a number of his natural attributes. Quentin arranged to continue meeting with Nessa regularly to develop his abilities, a possibility now that he understood the Ways and could navigate in realms outside the human world. He found pleasant distraction in the arts, most especially his favorite, golems. He could make golems of all kinds to serve his purposes, and his special gifts made it possible for him to create lifelike humanoid figures for whatever roles he wished, making it easy to keep a household and protect himself, the latter of which was becoming more and more essential as years passed. When everything went sour in France and the Reign of Terror came, it hit Quentin especially hard; the majority of his time was still spent in the human world, with an occasional excursion to Nessa's or elsewhere, but these were relatively day trips. His mind started to wander from the human world and its diversions. Things had begun to shift inexorably, and despite his ability to maintain his comfortable lifestyle through careful application of his miraculous abilities, he soon found himself forced to move from one place to another as imperialism and ambition set one alliance against another in series. It wore on Quentin's soul. For a while, his visits with Nessa became much more frequent, and then they curiously became far less so. He began to find places and occasions to simply lose himself with no sure way back. This fatalistic wandering bore him through so many years, and every time he returned to the human world, he faced an update to the inhumanity or some grand and terrible new atrocity. When the atomic bomb dropped, the last tatters of any hope that existed in his heart blew away. For some time afterward, he was completely incommunicado, having retreated to a hermitlike existence on another plane, his every day only filled with his magical work and populated only by the golems he created for company and housekeeping. However, when the hippies and other counterculture formed a tide of hope, he found himself attracted back to the human world again. For the dawning of the 1970s, things still seemed to ride that wave. Then the wave broke. The rest of the 70s were a ride of attempting desperately to hold fast to the principles that had allowed them to get there. Quentin refused to believe that the hopefulness, the optimism, the rumblings of something far greater, could be allowed to sink. Then the 80s administered the coup de grace of the soul, and some kind of multileveled nadir consumed everything. What's more, the "satanic panic" of the 70s had stimulated an unfortunate surge of witch-hunters and Quentin, try as he might, could not simply avoid them or allow them to continue on without intervening. The rest of the next quarter-century he spent in a singular war against a group of capable foes. With every victory, he also felt a profound loss, time after time forced to destroy life in order to protect. It was hard on the soul. Finally, he wiped out the last of the line of hunters that had plagued things since the 70s. It had been a long fight, the world was worse by then, and he had nothing left to give it. Maybe it would have something for him. Something to take the edge off. But first, he decided, he needed to seek out the one place he felt okay and the one person he felt good around: Aunt Nessa. |-| 'Ships= |-| Logs= Category:Character